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Real reason for rural floods: Rampant growth
By Ni Tao |
June 27, 2011, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
NEWS quickly goes stale and this journalistic maxim applies well to the recent change of news peg in China.
Barely two weeks ago domestic media were still probing the cause of the worst drought in 60 years to hit regions along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Now pride of place is given to the precipitous turn from drought to severe flooding in the same stricken areas, caused by intense rainfall.
This double whammy has highlighted, yet again, how vulnerable China is to nature's vagaries, and also how pathetically little money and attention has been dedicated to disaster prevention compared to that lavished on economic growth.
While it is now officially acknowledged that the rush to dam the Yangtze River for its hydro-electricity potential contributed to the drought, there are many other aspects, for instance agricultural issues, that ought to be examined for a better grasp of the rapidly changing nature of the disaster, some experts say.
The woefully inadequate rural irrigation infrastructure is a concern long ignored at a huge cost, as witnessed in the latest round of disasters.
Irrigation works in rural China are products of the 1960s and 1970s, when farmers were often mobilized in slack season to build and revamp them with nothing more than buckets, poles and their bare hands. Their main work was to dredge up the silt from the bottom of lakes and rivers.
Heavy sediment and silt, carried downstream, accumulate and elevate river and lake tables, causing them to overflow and inundate farmland in the rainy season; when water levels drop during a dry spell, the higher river tables make it hard for outside water to seep in, which is crucial to irrigating parched crops.
In the past, cleanup of the silt took place every one or two years and aware of its necessity, people willingly participated.
This public work, though primitive as it totally relied on human labor, has another benefit: The removed silt could be used to reinforce dykes. But according to media reports, many villages' lakes and reservoirs have been left neglected for decades. Silt thus has piled up.
One reason that this grassroots hydro project has languished all these years is a funding shortfall. In the 30 years leading to the market reform in 1978, China invested 76.3 billion yuan (US$11 billion) in the construction of rural irrigation systems. Combined with 58 billion yuan collected from self-organized rural production units for this purpose, the sum dwarfs the amount spent by many local governments on water diversion and conservation today.
Many of them are so "cash-strapped" after their building binge of white elephants that they barely have the wherewithal - or interest - to spare for rural hydro works.
Zhu Jianjun, a professor at Hunan-based Central South University, recently said that national expenditure on irrigation works for farming between 1978 and 2008 accounted for only 6 percent of the total hydro work outlays, leaving rural water-related facilities ill prepared for devastating droughts and floods.
Changing demographics has made matters worse; as young people increasingly migrate to cities to work, old folks and children left behind can hardly take on the backbreaking job of cleaning up silt. Gone with the young people is also the communal spirit that united villagers in past efforts to improve the shoddily built irrigation pipes and ditches.
Here is another case showing the changes brought about by market reform are not always for the better.
After pent-up desire to get rich was unleashed by the reform, people began to tend to their own business, and nobody volunteered anymore to do - or fund - the dirty job of tackling what is looking like a tragedy of the commons.
Decades of neglect of an important issue, both by the authorities and the public, has landed us here. If there is any positive side of the recent disaster, it is the reminder, once again, that growth achieved at the expense of basic human considerations will only open the floodgates to more of them.
Barely two weeks ago domestic media were still probing the cause of the worst drought in 60 years to hit regions along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Now pride of place is given to the precipitous turn from drought to severe flooding in the same stricken areas, caused by intense rainfall.
This double whammy has highlighted, yet again, how vulnerable China is to nature's vagaries, and also how pathetically little money and attention has been dedicated to disaster prevention compared to that lavished on economic growth.
While it is now officially acknowledged that the rush to dam the Yangtze River for its hydro-electricity potential contributed to the drought, there are many other aspects, for instance agricultural issues, that ought to be examined for a better grasp of the rapidly changing nature of the disaster, some experts say.
The woefully inadequate rural irrigation infrastructure is a concern long ignored at a huge cost, as witnessed in the latest round of disasters.
Irrigation works in rural China are products of the 1960s and 1970s, when farmers were often mobilized in slack season to build and revamp them with nothing more than buckets, poles and their bare hands. Their main work was to dredge up the silt from the bottom of lakes and rivers.
Heavy sediment and silt, carried downstream, accumulate and elevate river and lake tables, causing them to overflow and inundate farmland in the rainy season; when water levels drop during a dry spell, the higher river tables make it hard for outside water to seep in, which is crucial to irrigating parched crops.
In the past, cleanup of the silt took place every one or two years and aware of its necessity, people willingly participated.
This public work, though primitive as it totally relied on human labor, has another benefit: The removed silt could be used to reinforce dykes. But according to media reports, many villages' lakes and reservoirs have been left neglected for decades. Silt thus has piled up.
One reason that this grassroots hydro project has languished all these years is a funding shortfall. In the 30 years leading to the market reform in 1978, China invested 76.3 billion yuan (US$11 billion) in the construction of rural irrigation systems. Combined with 58 billion yuan collected from self-organized rural production units for this purpose, the sum dwarfs the amount spent by many local governments on water diversion and conservation today.
Many of them are so "cash-strapped" after their building binge of white elephants that they barely have the wherewithal - or interest - to spare for rural hydro works.
Zhu Jianjun, a professor at Hunan-based Central South University, recently said that national expenditure on irrigation works for farming between 1978 and 2008 accounted for only 6 percent of the total hydro work outlays, leaving rural water-related facilities ill prepared for devastating droughts and floods.
Changing demographics has made matters worse; as young people increasingly migrate to cities to work, old folks and children left behind can hardly take on the backbreaking job of cleaning up silt. Gone with the young people is also the communal spirit that united villagers in past efforts to improve the shoddily built irrigation pipes and ditches.
Here is another case showing the changes brought about by market reform are not always for the better.
After pent-up desire to get rich was unleashed by the reform, people began to tend to their own business, and nobody volunteered anymore to do - or fund - the dirty job of tackling what is looking like a tragedy of the commons.
Decades of neglect of an important issue, both by the authorities and the public, has landed us here. If there is any positive side of the recent disaster, it is the reminder, once again, that growth achieved at the expense of basic human considerations will only open the floodgates to more of them.
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